Two Twenty20 Opening Ceremonies

Today’s ICC Twenty20 World Cup’s opening ceremony, a fiasco drenched in rain:

Alesha Dixon is instead seen chewing the fat with a few MCC members in the Pavilion. Quite why she can’t sing her stuff from the balcony, a la Cliff Richard, I don’t know. So that was a bit of a damp squib. But I guess we really are here for the cricket.

There’s no cancelling the speeches, though, even if the dancing is off. David Morgan, the ICC president who looks a bit like Robert Vaughn, the Man from Uncle, would if he let himself go, is up first. Then the Duke of Kent, who says a few stirring words that we can’t hear in the press box. Probably advising people on where to buy souvenirs or something. And then dear old Giles Clarke, the ECB maestro, who I imagine is here to remind us all not to forget the Women’s World Twenty20. I’d tell you what he said if I could hear it, but they didn’t turn up the mikes in here.

The 2009 IPL opening ceremony? Fire-dancers!